Poet and Editor, Mary Stone Dockery

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My first poem has been posted to the Tupelo blog. This one was fun! To donate, please go to the link here and be sure to put my name – Mary Stone – in the ‘honor’ field!

This is Dating
(a partial found poem composed from lines from OkCupid dating profiles)

I’m not quite the same person as I was before
so I’ve started this new profile.

Hedonist, I sing the fire. Or maybe it’s the body electric.

I know enough about confession to unroll my acrylic tongue and paint the space between our mouths bruise-red, unholy.

I was one of those kids whose Mom hosed down before I could come in
from playing. Mud used to be safe.

When I want love I let my body love first, love hard.

I clean up nice. Think, paint, eat, repeat.

I love tattoos and plagiarism and finding her
on her couch at night with a guitar
and a cigarette, wearing a hangover.

A lover should be okay with sneaking cigarettes in a dive bar bathroom. With lifting her skirt.

I’d rather turn forty than understand
internal combustion,
visit an old friend than say the “Act of Contrition.”

I don’t really like people. Eat, think, paint, repeat.

She does not walk. She hovers and trades back massages even when I interrupt her.

You should message me if you
are a country girl, are a not a telemarketer,
if you want to know more about beards
if you love to satisfy, if you live somewhere
between Arcadia and Beverly Hills,
if you are polyamorous, if you are faithful,
if you’re a super hot super wealthy nymphomaniac
– a boy can dream, a boy can dream –
if you have patience even for ghouls.

Hi all: So! First Thursdays is in full swing – going strong since the Fall of 2012!

So, this open mic reading series comes out of a comforting and supportive poetry history in St. Joseph, MO. I remember that the first few times I read poetry were only because I was given the opportunity here in St. Joe when Bill Church and a few others had poetry readings and FORCED students to get up and share their work.

My goal, though, with First Thursdays, is to get a bigger audience, to get more people involved, and to provide a platform for diverse voices. This is a place where all kinds of writing is appreciated, where any level of writer can be applauded, and where all we want to do is celebrate that one thing we all love – creativity, imagination, especially the written word.

We have moved around a few times because we’re looking for a place we can truly call HOME. Where do our poems sound the best? Where are the people the nicest? Where is the beer cheap? We’re hoping our latest venue, with our own private room can help writers feel comfortable and free to share what they have to say.

First Thursdays is all about voice – about sharing your voice, being heard. We hope to eventually bridge the gap between academia and the university – because I once worked with a fantastic Kansas journal with the same goals, I feel that a poetry reading series with those goals of a true writer community can really become something amazing.

My plans: Perhaps we will have a yearly publication of works read by readers. Perhaps we can make this happen. I’d also like to have readings on campus in addition to off campus, and my ultimate goal will be to also bring in writers from the Midwest so that we can feature them and also share our work with them. We’ll see! I’d love to make this happen.

Hi all. Been kind of out of the blog business for a while, but wanted to announce my second collection of poetry – officially available now for purchase. Here are what some fine folks had to say about it. And – click HERE or the pic for a link to purchase. Thanks for your love and support.

Mary writes in the language of body and debris—at once physical, palpable, and, at times, obscured. Think of the last time you bared your knees to grass. OneLastCigarette burns with brutality in the night spilling open, plants questions to itself in mirrors. How does a meticulous, impossibly constructed gathering of cells become such a wanting and habitual machine? In another room, the torn sky answers, the body does not forget.

—David Tomaloff

Mary Stone Dockery’s OneLastCigarette is a seance of sorts, poems peopled by smoke-blown ghosts who do not just clip the candles or rattle the window frames, but rather get afternoon drunk and braid your hair.They are a story of wanting — wanting more, less, something different than what you think you have.They are language that is half-naked and tingles the skin like like teenage love or too much whiskey.These poems are sexy, sad, and, yes, haunting.

-Erin Elizabeth Smith

Mary Stone Dockery lights fireworks, “alters the cells around us”, in this thunderous, fierce, necessary collection, OneLastCigarette. Dockery consumes us, heart, spleen and lungs, “seeking each crack” within the psyche, blasting it until we stare into space waiting for the next cascade of “what color the world is after a night rain”.

OneLastCigarette is an intimate collection that reads like a bundle of love letters. Sensual but never vulgar, Stone Dockery conjures the ghosts of mothers, lovers, and children in these tightly crafted poems. She drops us into the tension of desire and loss coexisting in relationships with melancholy lines like “I allowed you inside me/a gloomy fog seeking each crack the last comfort.” These poems are reality seen through a prism: distorted Midwestern landscapes, a glimpse of a couple through a haze of smoke, hallucinations experienced in real-time.

-Katie Longofono, author of The Angel of Sex

Mary Stone Dockery’s poetry engages with the world through a keen and surprising vision. Her images shift and reveal truths by conjuring a kaleidoscopic inner and outer landscape. Reading Dockery’s work is akin to watching a lightning storm through your window: you watch the flashes of light in simultaneous terror and awe as you witness beauty alongside destruction—you realize you are safe, but you still flinch with every thunderclap. The visceral and haunting words of Dockery fulgurate this same way: you’ll hold her blazes behind your eyelids long after you read them, you’ll keep her rich sensuality stored under your own tongue.

Oh yes. Now comes the stage fright. I have no issues with submitting my work, putting it out there for editors to love or to hate. I have no issue with rejection, not really. Acceptances are always nice surprises.

Now that I’ve seen the galleys for One Last Cigarette, I’m nervous. It’s not that I don’t think it’s ready or that I despise my own work – nope. It’s just that little bit of stage fright before the “big” speech. It’s exciting and it’s awesome and terrifying all at once.

I want to thank all the fine writers who have offered their blurbs for me – here are a couple of them. Thanks so much to Meg Tuite, Erin Elizabeth Smith, Anne Champion, Katie Longofono, Matt Porubsky, and David Tomaloff. Can’t wait to start planning all my readings and to hold this book in my hands!

Mary Stone Dockery lights fireworks, “alters the cells around us”, in this thunderous, fierce, necessary collection, One Last Cigarette. Dockery consumes us, heart, spleen and lungs, “seeking each crack” within the psyche, blasting it until we stare into space waiting for the next cascade of “what color the world is after a night rain”.

One Last Cigarette is mesmerizing, reverberates our explosive, unexplored lives back at us. It’s brilliant and unforgettable. Read it!

–Meg Tuite, author of Bound by Blue

One Last Cigarette is an intimate collection that reads like a bundle of love letters. Sensual but never vulgar, Stone Dockery conjures the ghosts of mothers, lovers, and children in these tightly crafted poems. She drops us into the tension of desire and loss coexisting in relationships with melancholy lines like “I allowed you inside me/a gloomy fog seeking each crack the last comfort.” These poems are reality seen through a prism: distorted Midwestern landscapes, a glimpse of a couple through a haze of smoke, hallucinations experienced in real-time.

-Katie Longofono, author of The Angel of Sex

Mary Stone Dockery’s poetry engages with the world through a keen and surprising vision. Her images shift and reveal truths by conjuring a kaleidoscopic inner and outer landscape. Reading Dockery’s work is akin to watching a lightning storm through your window: you watch the flashes of light in simultaneous terror and awe as you witness beauty alongside destruction—you realize you are safe, but you still flinch with every thunderclap. The visceral and haunting words of Dockery fulgurate this same way: you’ll hold her blazes behind your eyelids long after you read them, you’ll keep her rich sensuality stored under your own tongue.

Haven’t been submitting work as furiously this year. For some reason, I’m pulling back, waiting, letting the writing happen. But, when something interesting comes up, I’ll submit, and I’ve had a few pieces of good news recently: Poems forthcoming in Gutter Eloquence, Slipstream, Sierra Nevada Review, The Meadow, and I-70 Review. Will most likely spend the summer planning, submitting, and writing. Actually, thinking a few submissions need to be sent out this month. Not sure what happened, exactly, except that those health issues that started in January are only just now beginning to heal, and so hoping that the sun, warmer weather, and a new schedule will bring about the inspiration and motivation I’ve been craving.

This summer I’ll also be planning poetry readings, book signings, and more with the publication of One Last Cigarette from Honest Publishing. It still feels so surreal. I can’t wait for this book to be out in the world.

Received word recently that my collaborative chapbook, Honey and Bandages, co-written with Katie Longofono, may have a later release date. Will keep you updated. Sometime later in the year, my chapbook The Dopamine Letters will be released from Hyacinth Girl Press. They do beautiful work – the chapbooks are made so well. They are open for submissions if you have something you would like to send – http://hyacinthgirlpress.com/.

This is a little book – made up of 50-word prose poems, with a few verse poems scattered that use the language of horoscopes (very strange horoscopes). A book that kind of revises itself, contradicts itself, even at times. I’m happy it’s out. A little different.

I want to thank Sammy, my editor, for being so amazing to work with and for putting this out into the world. I’m delighted with the cover and the design. Simple, yet classy.